Fortnite

The new entertainment trend has come. Fortnite has taken over millions of lives and taken the world by storm. It has quickly shot up to become one of the most popular video games in history. This game has received so much acclaim and it only costs…wait, it’s a free game? Yes, Fortnite is 100% free to play. Fortnite features a Hunger Games approach to gameplay where you are dropped onto an island populated by cities and landmarks with 99 other players (making it 100 people in a match). Last man standing wins. You are tasked with looting houses that have randomly spawned weapons to fight your fellow players as well as breaking down materials like trees, cars, and buildings to get materials to build structures to use as cover or to get the high ground on your opponent. When traversing the landscape of the island, a storm is closing in on you to force the players to get closer and closer together until the circle is small enough to force a 1v1 situation to win the game. This is when your heart starts racing and you need to execute perfectly to get the coveted “Victory Royale”.

While Fortnite is a free game, it still produces the most revenue of any game out right now. How? It sells micro-transaction based skins, which while making yourself look amazing doesn’t grant any tactical advantages (except maybe a dinosaur outfit making you less visible when in a bush). A skin can cost anywhere from about $10 to 25$, better skins being higher priced. In addition to skins, you can buy things such as dance emotes or trails and gliders for your leap to the island. These are usually priced at just over $10 or lower. The game also offers what they term a “Battle Pass” which is $9 and allows the player to earn their skins, gliders, emotes, and trails. This is served in seasons where every season you must buy a new Battle Pass in order to continue to earn gear through their progression system.

Now, where this game really broke through into the market was when they added Fortnite Mobile to their available platforms. Now you can play Fortnite anywhere, yes even in school. Fortnite Mobile is only available on iOS devices, for now. Rare (Fortnite’s developers) have announced their plans to bring the pop culture phenomenon to more mobile phones soon such as Android devices.

Fortnite has moved into a new world of popularity through the famous people who openly brag about their wins in the game. For example, Drake. Yea, Drake the rapper, he plays Fortnite and he helped set a record for viewers in a live stream on gaming live streaming platform Twitch. He decided he wanted to play some games with the pro-Fortnite player and streamer Ninja. Drake tweeted it out and they ended up peaking in viewership with 635,000 viewers. This is the highest number of viewers for any individually streamed gaming live stream ever composed (excluding eSport events such as League of Legends and Dota). Rapper Travis Scott and Steelers wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster also joined in on the fun and played with Ninja and Drake. Fortnite is especially popular among the world of professional athletes, likely due to the intense level of competitiveness of most players. Some include Boston Celtics’ forward Gordon Hayward, Minnesota Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns, and Boston Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts. Many players cite the game as a way to release the stresses of the daily training, practices, and games. Some even use the game as a pre-game warmup because it gets the blood flowing and adrenaline pumping. Aforementioned Juju Smith-Schuster even said that winning a game of Fortnite feels better than scoring a touchdown.

Overall, Fortnite has taken the world of gaming by storm and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon with it’s constant updates of the map layout and the different tools being added every week. It will be interesting to see where Fortnite, as well as the battle royale genre, will go in the future.